Introducing the Dallas Campus Lecture Series
Throughout the Fall 2018 semester, Mr. Jordan is offering a few evening events that will involve a brief lecture, discussion, and fellowship. Click the title of this post to read more about each lecture.
Please RSVP now for these sessions by emailing him directly: jon.jordan@coramdeoacademy.org. Depending on the number of attendees for each session, we may meet in a family’s home or rent a larger venue.
LECTURE 1: TALKING ABOUT CLASSICAL CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
Monday, September 17th at 7pm. Venue TBD.
You are walking in the grocery store, minding your own business, fairly confident that you know what you are doing with your life, when you run into a family friend who strikes up a conversation. They wind up asking a question that seems simple on the surface, “So what is classical Christian education? What makes it different?”
You get excited. You love Classical Christian education. This is the perfect chance for you to talk about something you love.
Then you begin trying to cram millennia of educational insight into a 30 second sound-bite. You want to communicate well, but what really comes out is something more like, “Well. Hm. We learn Latin. And we read the Iliad and the Odyssey. And our students can read, and speak, and write really well, eventually. And we don’t pass out iPads to every incoming PreK student… There is a lot more to it than that, but it is a long story. I promise it is great!”
This may have never happened to you, but it will eventually. It has certainly happened to me. Classical Christian Education is a complex animal, and it takes a lot of work to understand what all it entails. And it takes a lot more work to distill some of what it entails down to a minute-long conversation in the grocery store.
This session is aimed towards helping us all understand—and be able to talk about—Classical Christian education better than we do now.
LECTURE 2: SOCIAL MEDIA & VIRTUE
Monday, October 15th at 7pm. Venue TBD.
Christian Virtue could be understood as the patient acquisition of holy habits that is started, sustained, and finally accomplished by God’s grace in each of our lives. All of us, including our students, are becoming virtuous. Thousands of small, daily choices are molding us into who we will become.
In light of this reality, what role does Social Media play in our development as virtuous humans? What impact, positive or negative, does daily interaction with the digital world have on our souls?
What can we do as parents, and as a school, in light of these questions?
READING GROUP: THE BENEDICT OPTION
First meeting: Monday, November 12th at 7pm. Venue TBD.
Join Mr. Jordan and other CDA families in reading The Benedict Option, by Rod Dreher. We will read, discuss, agree, and disagree with this thought-provoking book. (A book that happens to mention Coram Deo Academy by name!)
From the back cover:
Rod Dreher argues that the way forward is actually the way back—all the way to St. Benedict of Nursia. This sixth-century monk, horrified by the moral chaos following Rome’s fall, retreated to the forest and created a new way of life for Christians. He built enduring communities based on principles of order, hospitality, stability, and prayer. His spiritual centers of hope were strongholds of light throughout the Dark Ages, and saved not just Christianity but Western civilization.
